How long did the Keilak fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 October 2026 and 31 October 2026: 20 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,348 hectares (103.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Keilak (7,191 ha, 0.8 %); Kadugli (3,228 ha, 1.5 %).

Is the Keilak fire still active?

No fire detections since 31 Oct 2026, 22:46 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sudan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

SD · Sudan · 2026-10-12 → 2026-10-31

Keilak fire, 12 October 2026 Keilak, Kadugli

Dying down · last detection 31 Oct 2026, 22:46 UTC

The fire started on 12 October 2026 in Keilak, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,348 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in West Kordofan since 2016 (of 185 with a page). Number 10 in Sudan in 2026, of 284.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Keilak · 2020 Kadugli · 2026 Keilak · 2026 Keilak · 2026

Is it still active?

No detections since 31 Oct 2026, 22:46 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area: 10,348ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 12 Oct 2026 – 31 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; localities
Started on: 12 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 211; in a single hotspot: 85 MW
Danger at start: 50; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 132MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Oct31 Oct

Play back 31 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

14 Oct 17 Oct 20 Oct 23 Oct 25 Oct 26 Oct 29 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

42°high

46km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 910 ha in 2016, 799 ha in 2025.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.5% of the area of London (103 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Keilak where it started

7,191 ha reached on 16 Oct

0.8 %
Kadugli

3,228 ha reached on 14 Oct

1.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Danger (FWI)
12 Oct	38.1 °C	22 %	30 km/h	Extreme 50
13 Oct	36.7 °C	34 %	26 km/h	High 36
14 Oct	39.7 °C	18 %	38 km/h	Extreme 53
15 Oct	41.1 °C	16 %	31 km/h	Extreme 52
16 Oct	41.1 °C	13 %	36 km/h	Extreme 56
17 Oct	38.8 °C	16 %	30 km/h	Very high 50
18 Oct	37.7 °C	22 %	19 km/h	Very high 42
19 Oct	40.3 °C	14 %	35 km/h	Extreme 53
20 Oct	41.0 °C	14 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
21 Oct	41.5 °C	15 %	36 km/h	Extreme 57
22 Oct	41.2 °C	13 %	30 km/h	Extreme 61
23 Oct	40.5 °C	13 %	27 km/h	Extreme 51
24 Oct	40.4 °C	13 %	28 km/h	Extreme 54
25 Oct	39.6 °C	12 %	27 km/h	Extreme 53
26 Oct	39.5 °C	12 %	24 km/h	Very high 48
27 Oct	38.9 °C	11 %	45 km/h	Extreme 59
28 Oct	39.5 °C	8 %	34 km/h	Extreme 67
29 Oct	40.7 °C	10 %	46 km/h	Very extreme 71
30 Oct	39.5 °C	14 %	38 km/h	Extreme 64
31 Oct	39.8 °C	15 %	32 km/h	Extreme 61
1 Nov after	40.8 °C	16 %	30 km/h	Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

↔

Before · 5 Oct 2026

After · 31 Oct 2026

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 22 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 62 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak62 µg/m³

Days over the guideline12 days

PM10208 µg/m³

Optical depth0.57

WHO 15

1011121314151617181920212223

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 211Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.

⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.

Date and time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Keilak fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 October 2026 and 31 October 2026: 20 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,348 hectares (103.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Keilak (7,191 ha, 0.8 %); Kadugli (3,228 ha, 1.5 %).
Is the Keilak fire still active?: No fire detections since 31 Oct 2026, 22:46 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sudan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 6 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

1 November 2026 Area: 10,122 → 10,348 ha.
30 October 2026 Area: 9,597 → 10,122 ha.
28 October 2026 Area: 9,246 → 9,597 ha.
27 October 2026 Area: 4,977 → 9,246 ha.
27 October 2026 Name: Kadugli → Keilak.
26 October 2026 Area: 4,837 → 4,977 ha.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 211 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.